A few days ago I wrote about the utter neglect of equity and wider awareness in arguments for their own funding being issued by “mainstream” arts advocates. “So what should they be saying and doing?” some readers asked. This is my answer. I’d be interested to know yours. First, a little context. There’s a persistent …
What if—as I’ve recently written—the current pandemic is a “hinge moment” in history, offering the possibility of a break from the past? What if the actions taken in response to the pandemic, especially the things that we have repeatedly been told are impossible (such as radically cutting emissions) demonstrate that another world is indeed possible? …
When I try to express how I feel these days, the image that comes to me is a knot. A big one. A Gordian knot, the kind I can slice through with a single blow from the right sword. I’m someone who usually knows what to do—right or wrong, there it almost always is. But …
Remember the TV series “Monk?” Tony Shaloub plays a brilliant and observant detective who is traumatized, reclusive yet lonely, and often ostracized on account of his extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder. He’s learned to sometimes suppress his forthrightness for others’ comfort, but he doesn’t always succeed. One recurrent trope has him laying out a crime-solving hypothesis that …
I’ve seen it a few times now, an incipient meme. “If this were a movie,” people write, “no one would believe it.” “This” of course refers to the epidemic of surreality more than the virus itself (the latter being all-too believable). Yesterday’s news, for example, #IMPOTUS tweeting “LIBERATE!” in support of right-wing protesters against public …
Here are the things that have been going through my mind: Solidarity, The Velvet Revolution, the fall of Apartheid. Why? Because each of these represents a moment in history in which a critical mass of people awakened to the truth that the regimes oppressing them were far from the permanent and unshakeable authorities portrayed in …
As a longtime cultural policy wonk, I’ve been perpetually frustrated at the persistence of American exceptionalism, our stubborn insistence on our own unique superiority, our stubborn refusal to look beyond our own borders for inspiring examples and new ways of seeing. This is usually accompanied by some type of smug assertion about the superiority of …
What can console us in the face of the Great Unknown? I thought I understood that safety was always an illusion: any of us could be struck down at any moment. But having the illusion of safety erased, that’s uncertainty of another magnitude, so vastly out of proportion to the “normal,” default reality that words …
I feel sad this morning. There is blame-slinging all around. It’s all about the last few weeks at the moment, as if all that came before had been forgotten. I’m seeing people blame sexism as the sole cause for defeating Warren, as if her own choices were entirely irrelevant. I’m seeing people focusing on the …
I’ve probably confessed before to both of the sins detailed in this essay, but if not, here they are: binge-watching and superstition. I do a lot of exercises every morning (possibly on account of superstition: I’m afraid that if I skip even a day, my back will seek revenge). I really like the benefits—but the …